Hillaryzilla

Campaigning is an endless loop of faces and handshakes and questions and seldom enough time to go to the bathroom. About 10:30 this morning I told Maggie Williams that I needed a break. She agreed and we called a halt to glad handing and headed to the bathroom.

We both peered into the mirror at the same time, looking for any new wrinkles, ready to pat down a shiny spot. “Maggie,” I said, “What’s Obama’s appeal to white women?”

She looked at me the same way Oprah looks at someone before delivering a one-word punch line, and said, “Elvis.”

“Elvis,” I said? “Sure, Obama’s a good speaker, even charismatic, but he’s no Elvis.”

Maggie said, “He’s more Elvis than you think. The Elvis Factor is all about forbidden fruit. Why do you think all those white teenage girls in the 50s and 60s bought records of black singers? Forbidden fruit. White women long to know about black men.”

“So,” I said, “Obama gets white women to vote for him because of some sort of primal instinct?”

Maggie rolled her eyes as if I’d been given a free ride on the clue bus, then she put her hand on my arm, and pulled me close and said, “Honey, what you don’t know about men could fill a book.”

She’s right, of course. Maggie is always right.

You would think people would warm up to me after all I’ve been through. I have a great smile. My hair is perfect. I look good in pantsuits. I don’t stutter or drool.

Who is Samantha Power and why does she think I’m “a monster?” I’ve been parodied on Saturday Night Live. I’ve been on Saturday Night Live. People in Texas, California, New York, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida love me. I’m still here. But “a monster?”

Samantha who? She is one of Barack Obama’s most trusted and influential and articulate advisors, says so. She said, “She is a monster, too… she is stooping to anything… people just look at her and think ‘Ergh.‘” So much for being articulate.

The woman absolutely positively is a bitch.

Mark Penn cried Havoc! and unleashed the dogs of war and no less than a dozen of my underling lemmings chastised Barack Obama as being unqualified to be President because he can’t control his aides and advisors. If you can’t control the people close to you, then you won’t make a good President.

That’s what I always say.

There’s not much these days that shakes me up. We’ve had about 20 televised debates. 20 or 30 Democratic primary elections and caucuses. I never know what Bill will do next.

I’m afraid of Saturday Night Live.

Tomorrow night is my night and every time I think about it I get chills. The possibilities are endless for a major screw up on national television in front of a live audience. I ask myself, “Hillary, how is this any different than a debate, or a campaign rally?”

In many respects it’s not different at all. It’s live. It’s televised. People are watching. The biggest difference, hence my fear, is the comedy element. A debate is not a comedic event, despite a few smiles here and there. The same goes for speaking in front of thousands of supporters. It’s just not a problem. After all, I don’t go up there to crack jokes.

But jokes and making fun is what Saturday Night Live is all about. Most people don’t know it, but when I laugh in an uncontrolled, unrehearsed setting, I snort. God. I will absolutely die if I snort on SNL tomorrow night.

Sometimes it gets so bad that not only do I snort when I laugh, but snot drips from nose and sticks to my lips. It’s not a pretty sight. All that has to happen is one laugh, one snort, one snot drip, and 5-million YouTube videos will course the world. That will do more damage than a dozen Monica Lewinskys. My fingers are crossed and I plan to take a dose of NyQuil before going on stage.

No one knows better than me how crazy politics can get sometimes. I didn’t want anyone to know, but I won half a delegate last week. That got me to 1,276.5 total delegates.

For a very pragmatic reason, the Democrats Abroad expatriate group were awarded delegates with half a vote. We set it up that way so that more delegates could attend the convention and think they were important by being there, but not inflate the vote.

These Democrats voted by sending in faxes, using the Internet, and by mail. Barack Obama got 3 delegate votes, and I got 1.5. The total is four and a half votes split among nine delegates. Call me crazy, but that’s new math, Democrat style.

So, I ended up with half a delegate vote. Not half a delegate, though some of them are half wits.

This is where it gets confusing. It’s embarrassing to have just half a delegate (vote), so we didn’t say anything about it, and the Obama camp doesn’t count too well and probably didn’t understand the complexity of this Democrats Abroad thing, so they didn’t say anything, either.

Today I picked up yet another half delegate from the SuperDelegates of Democrats Abroad. Obama got four delegates and I got one, which is really half, so I simply added the new half delegate vote to my total, and instead of 1,276.5 delegates, I’ve got an even 1,277 delegates, which isn’t really an even number, but it’s close enough and just sounds so much better than half a delegate.

Still, half a delegate is better than no delegate at all.

Maggie Williams was rummaging through Patti Solis Doyle’s desk, cleaning out the junk when she came across a photo of Barack Obama in Africa. She showed it to Icky and Mark, and they brought it to me.

A photo of Barack isn’t much news but in this particular photo he was touring Africa and got all dressed up in traditional African clothes with some kind of towel wrapped around his head. He looked positively black and Muslim at the same time. It was priceless photography. A true picture that tells a thousand words. Maybe more.

Hmmmm. What to do? What to do?

Should I listen to Icky and Bill and make sure the photo gets leaked to the press so they can raise a stir about Obama’s Muslim roots and again publish the fact that he’s actually African-American whose middle name is Hussein and his father belonged to the same religion that attacked America on September 11?

Or, should I listen to Maggie and Mark, and ignore it altogether? After all, I’ve visited many countries and worn their traditional clothing, too.

For example, my relatives came from Europe so I wear pantsuits which were donated to me from designers and clothiers in France and Italy. I’m sure I have some relatives from there.

The point is, American voters need to know something about the roots of their presidential candidates, where they’re from, what kinds of clothing they wear when they’re away on vacation. That kind of thing.

On the other hand, publishing a photo of Barack Obama all gussied up in proper Muslim attire could be seen as baiting or inflammatory or negative campaigning.

I don’t know and there’s only one real way to find out.

Shades of Don Imus. NBC news hack David Shuster dropped a “P” bomb to describe Chelsea helping us out on the campaign trail. What an insulting and degrading man Shuster must be to stoop so low to get a laugh.

Alright, Imus lost his job for an ill-advised slur. “Nappy headed hoes” is just a line he used for effect, but it crossed the line of respect. Sorry, NBC, but there’s a reason you’re the last place network. It’s time to dump Shuster.

Why does Shuster keep his job after this: “Doesn’t it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?”

Hello? NBC! Every candidate gets family to help out during a campaign. Why? Because we don’t have to pay them. Duh. Do you think I pay Bill to stir up trouble?

Talk about right wing conspiracies. Shuster’s comment wasn’t just poor taste. It was part of a huge right wing conspiracy to bring me down. Again. Big business does not want to see Big Hill in the White House.

Big business? You see, not only is NBC in last place, but their ghetto cable station, MSNBC is the Windows Vista of cable news. Microsoft poured nearly a billion dollars into MSNBC and for what? So their right wing news reader hacks could distort the truth?

Not only should I cancel my scheduled appearance on the next MSNBC debate, but I think I’ll dump my Dell laptop and switch to a Mac. That’ll show them.

We were up late last night working on campaign organizational changes. I hated to see Patti go, but Donald Trump was right. Find the one with the bad complexion, and issue a ‘You’re Fired!‘ citation.

Patti took it well and fell straight down on her sword without a whimper or a trace of blood. She’s young and will probably get a book deal out of it anyway. Nothing says a political campaign is troubled when the campaign manager jumps ship, which is what Patti’s departure from Hillaryland looks like to some political pundits. In reality, the woman is a control freak. Worse than me.

Anyway, last night’s meeting had the rest of my political family, and other than smiley-faced Maggie Williams, not much changed. I tease Maggie about her smile. Or, lack of. The woman can frown so bad sometimes that House members have nightmares. But she is really good at collaboration. So long as everyone collaborates her way.

Terry McAuliffe and Jon Mantz still head fundraising and did well the past couple of weeks. They still owe me $5-million, though. If fund raising doesn’t improve, then advertising manager Mandy Grunwald gets the next Donald Trump salute.

Mark Penn and Harold Ickes got into a heated argument just before we broke up the meeting last night. Every time we talked about moving some of Patti’s responsibilities, Mark would say, “You’re next, Icky!” Single parents have no clue how lucky they are. I’ve got to deal with Bill, Spanky, and Alfalfa every day. Patti is Darla. Maggie is Butch.

I got a call on my cell phone twice today from Katie Couric. Again. The woman just won’t leave me alone. It seems that Mike Wallace is sick and CBS wants her to interview me.

Mike Wallace is still alive? Who knew?

So, we’re talking about interview topics and Obama and how tiring it gets on the campaign trail and suddenly, Katie asks me, “Do you pop vitamins? Do you mainline coffee?”

Sure. Like I’m going to answer that and tell her for all the world to know what it is I do to keep going. I say, “Katie, I take vitamins. I drink tea, not coffee anymore.” She gets all whiny and pouty on the phone and tells me I must be hiding something, “Where do you get the stamina?”

Sometimes it’s just easier to make things up. “Well, Katie,” I said, “My two secrets to staying healthy– wash your hands all the time. And hot peppers. I eat a lot of hot peppers.”

I just made that up. The wags at CBS will believe anything. Just ask Dan Rather.

So I loaned my own campaign some money. Big deal. It’s old news. Look, early January was a tough time for campaign contributions, what with the loss in Iowa, Christmas shopping bills that came due, and so on. I can understand why people stopped contributing.

What I don’t understand is why people keep asking the same question today, “Where did Hillary get $5-million?”

Sure, in this age of full disclosure it’s a fair question. I’m very grateful that no one asked it in public when reporters and television cameras were around. $5-million sure didn’t come from Bill’s pension fund or my salary as Senator.

The truth is that we’ve been frugal and saved quite a bit of money over the past few years. There’s speaking appearances, book deals, fund raising funds that didn’t get spent, movie rights, gifts, free lunches. It adds up.

Howard Wolfson and Terry McAuliffe came up with the loan idea. They said it was a good way to buy some time and shake out our bloated campaign operation. Over the past year we’d picked up a bunch of fair weather operatives, consultants, and hangers-on, so we asked everyone to work for nothing in January, then I made the loan.

Campaign staffers scattered like cock roaches in an Arkansas kitchen when the lights come on.

The only ones left were the true loyalists. Contributions picked up again right after New Hampshire and today looks like another good day, too. If it doesn’t work out, so what? I’ll get $10-million for the movie rights alone.

How do I keep myself looking so good during a grueling 16-hour-a-day presidential campaign? That’s the most asked question I get from women.

Do they want to know about health care, or child care, or the economy, or the war in Iraq? Nope. No one ever asks about such things unless they’re the butch half of a committed female partnership.

Thank God I don’t have to worry about how I look each day. We hired a few people to come in, pick out the perfect wardrobe for each occasion through the day. That’s a lot of pantsuits. That’s the only way to disguise those thighs, camouflage those calves.

It’s easy. Each day starts the same way. A little exercise, a shower, some makeup, do the hair, add hose, don the pantsuit, slip into some heels and I’m done. The key to this whole image thing is the pantsuits and the hair. The suits have to be feminine but in a businesslike way to attract male voters. Add the streaked blonde hair and my feminine side shows through, but it doesn’t intimidate women.

Oprah does the same thing by staying fat.